Home of the Week: Scotty and Pam Snider

Room for history

Jun. 19, 2013

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Written by

DONNA BAXTER

PHOTOS BY DAVID WELKER

Scotty and Pam Snider built their house 11 years ago in Ozark.

Want to go?

What: Home tour When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and June 30 Where: Scotty and Pam Snider Home, 1118 E. Wren St., Ozark Admission: $10 per person; tickets available at the Feathered Nest, 1603 S. Third St. (at the top of the hill) Information: Store: 581-5090; cellphone: 521-4886 If a friend’s home, your design client’s home (or yours) is worth profiling, send names, address, phone number and brief description to Sony Hocklander at shocklander@news-leader.com. Homes for sale are not eligible. See additional photos of this home at OzarkSpaces.com.

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Scotty and Pam Snider built their house 11 years ago on the highest hill in Ozark.

“From the front porch we can see far out in the distance. It’s quiet here, and we have good neighbors,” said Pam.

The foyer, with its barrel ceiling and half-moon window above the door, are features added by the builders so it could be used as a show house, she said.

Scotty, an artist, said he has few of his own paintings at home but several are at the Sniders’ store, Feathered Nest on South Third Street in Ozark. Other artwork, including carvings and replicas found throughout the home, were done by mostly local artists, including Howard Garrison and Loretta Gardner.

Scotty pointed out an antique slide projector that he described as a Christmas present to himself. Underneath the projector is a stack of books by artist Andrew Wyeth. Another table holds a stack of Harold Bell Wright books with Wright family photos tucked between the pages.

“The projector still has the original Edison light bulbs that work. You slide pictures in back, turn the top and it projects the pictures on the wall,” said Scotty. “It was made before they had plug-ins; it has an electric cord that screws into a light socket.”

An old cemetery gate is used as a headboard. Across the window is a section of fence that once surrounded the Baldknobber jail at the courthouse in Ozark. A large blowup of that jail, showing the fence, hangs on the opposite wall.

Scotty made frames for Baldknobber art and historical photos from the wood used to build the gallows on the Ozark square where the last three Baldknobbers were hanged in May 1889. Lumber from the gallows was used in a one-room house by the city cemetery. When the house was razed, the city gave the wood to Scotty because he “was the only one who knew anything about it.”

When he tore off the wall coverings, revealing original wood, he found pieces of newspapers that told about the hangings, he said.

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“We have over 10,000 photos of Christian County, including the only known photo ever made of the gallows and the earliest photo of the Ozark mill that we’ve ever found. It was made after the covered bridge washed away in the flood of 1909,” Scotty said.

One guest bedroom is dedicated to President Abraham Lincoln, another to Mary Todd Lincoln.

“My dad was kin to Mary Todd, and my mother was kin to Abraham,” said Scotty. Several pieces in the bedrooms — handed down through family — were in the White House while the Lincolns lived there.

Pam, who works at a day care facility, said that someday she and her husband would like to build a watermill house with a room dedicated to the Lincoln items.

Scotty said they’d been collecting “things that people don’t collect” ever since their marriage in 1981.

For more than two decades (until last year) the Sniders hosted a Christmas home tour.

They will host a home tour on Saturday and June 30. More information and tickets are available at the Feathered Nest, 1603 S. Third St., in Ozark.